1500 is well above the challenger cutoff so far. That means a hard 65 to 70% of participating players cannot reach it by simple logic of math. I’m sure parading “Just be the top 30% of players” to get starter level gear is absolutely going to motivate that 70% playerbase cannabalizing itself down.
The arena system itself is a ponzi scheme. You need a large number of giga newbies to prop up the ladder - low participation deflates the ladder. This is classic, not something new: average people know better than to engage in content that only brings misery and stress. That is why arenas are giga dead.
There’s so few people LFG for even casual arenas on mega server Grobbulus and the server discords are barren themselves for pvp.